Undermining Public Schooling

Doesn't it seem weird to have a web site like TeachTheFacts.org, incorporated and everything, with a Board of Directors and a bunch of officers, and a busy blog like Vigilance, and everybody getting emotional and arguing? And across town, another web site about the same thing, taking a different view, and bad-mouthing and saying things and trying to get on the news and threatening to recall the school board... I mean, c'mon, we're talking about a couple of health classes here, who could really care?

Well, really, there's a lot of other stuff going on.

Our health classes are parallel to those biology classes where the same type of ideologues want to teach creationism instead of science. As you know, over in Kansas they got a nutty school board in place, and they voted to make the switch, replace science with ghost stories. That was bad, as one of them said, Kansas is now a laughingstock, and there is some question about what happens to those students when they apply to universities that expect them to have had an education in science.

That was only last week, and now, just look over there and you'll see where this is heading. The Lawrence [Kansas] Journal-World reports:

Topeka — Education Commissioner Bob Corkins and State Board of Education member Connie Morris promoted charter schools on a two-day tour of western Kansas that ended Tuesday.

But the subject didn’t go over so well, according to folks who attended the meetings.

“It was not a warm and fuzzy meeting at all,” said Marvin Selby, superintendent of the Goodland school district.

“We certainly found out what their agenda is,” said Wes Fox, a history teacher at Liberal High School. “It is to promote charter schools.” Corkins, Morris not well-received in tour out west

I think it's about time to pause and look into this "charter school" business a little bit.

So what's that about?

Corkins has promoted changing Kansas law to allow more charter schools, which are schools that are not subject to some of the same rules and regulations as a traditional public school. Morris has spoken in favor of starting a charter school to help students start their own businesses.

Corkins also supports voucher plans that would allow at-risk or special-needs students to receive state tax assistance to attend private schools. He said the move to more charter schools and vouchers would improve education by increasing competition and giving parents more choices for their children’s education.

It is nothing less than an attack on the institution of public schooling in America, and, I think, an attack on intellect as a cultural institution.

Groups like the CRC hammer at a local school district with a win-win strategy. For them. They will insist on some absurd thing, like intelligent design, or "ex-gays," and they will whine and complain and make everybody miserable about it. If the school district gives in, as they did in Kansas, and provides this crazy stuff, then ordinary people will want to send their kids somewhere besides the public schools. If they don't, then the religious extremists can be indignant and threaten to pull all their kids out of the public schools, as the Southern Baptists nearly did recently.

Either way, public education is undermined. I really don't like where this goes, and hope the people of Montgomery County are paying attention.